From Fighting Pain to Living Well: Joletta Belton’s Shift

Mark Kargela: [00:00:00] What was your relationship with pain during that time?

Joletta Belton: Conceptually, I thought of it as the enemy. This thing that I had to fight, this thing that I had to eradicate. And so everything was like a battle, fighting pain. This mentality of going to war with my pain.

Mark Kargela: a lot of people are stuck right in that fight and in that battle and that can really grip people for some time. I'm wondering what opened your mind to maybe a different approach.

Joletta Belton: So there was a lot of cognitive dissonance going on and a lot of fear around like taking this leap of trying so much of what I was learning led me to this belief that if I.

Got back to living. That might help with my pain rather than being in like this holding pattern that I had been in for a really long time, trying to fix the pain before I got back to living.

Mark Kargela: Welcome back to the Modern Pain Podcast. In this episode, we're continuing a powerful series exploring the humanity of the lived experience of pain. These conversations are part of the work we're doing inside our Pain Practice OS course, where we help clinicians not just understand pain science, but also connect deeply with the real voices and stories of people [00:01:00] living with pain.

My hope is that these episodes give you and the patients you work with resources to make sense of the journey, to feel less alone, and to see that a different way forward is possible.

In this episode of the series, I'm joined by Joletta Belton, a former firefighter whose life was transformed by persistent pain. Joletta shares what it was like when her world became very small, how she once saw pain as an enemy to fight, and what helped her shift from battling pain to building a bigger life around it.

Together we discussed the emotional toll of pain when life shrinks down the shift from fixing pain to living well with pain, the importance of peer support, self-compassion, and relationship, and what true acceptance looks like and why it's not just giving up.

Whether you're a clinician or someone living with pain, this conversation will challenge how you think about recovery and give you tools to share with patients who may be stuck in the fight.

Let's dive into this important conversation with Joletta Belton

This is the Modern Pain Podcast with Mark Kargela.

Mark Kargela: Joletta. i'm wondering when pain was at its worst when you felt like it was the most challenging time. I'm wondering if you could share what life looked like [00:02:00] when you were in that situation.

Joletta Belton: So when my pain was at its worst, life was very small. So I wasn't working anymore. I had gone off on workers' compensation after an injury that I sustained. On the job. So I was no longer working. I was no longer, I had been a firefighter, so I was no longer with my crew in doing, this job that I had identified myself by and that, gave me purpose and all of those sorts of things, I was also.

Unable to sit, like my pain was in my hip. And the activity I guess you could call it that caused the most pain was sitting. So not being able to sit made my life even smaller because I couldn't drive, I couldn't go out to a restaurant. I couldn't go to a movie. I couldn't even meet like a friend for coffee 'cause I had to be standing or lying flat all the time.

So my world just became like our house in the backyard. I didn't leave the house very much. And it, it was just a very. Lonely and dark time because I [00:03:00] didn't know what was going on at that time. I didn't know I, I had gone through a bunch of different therapies already. I had gone through physical therapy and medications and injections and nothing was working.

And so was just in this place of, I didn't know what the future held for me, if I was gonna be able to go back to work and this career that had given me a sense of. Purpose and that I loved and that I missed, or if I'd even be able to get back to any of just the activities that I liked doing. All of those things that made me feel like me, like running.

I was a gym rat when I got hurt. So I would spend hours in the gym. I was one of those people. But those, I would, I was a heavy lifter. I was a CrossFitter, and I would tell everybody about it and try and get them to do CrossFit too. So but all those things were part of my identity at the time.

And then not being able to do those things, I was just in a very isolated, dark, small place. My world was just very small for a long time.

Mark Kargela: What was your relationship with pain during that time? A lot of people relate like a struggle or a fight and [00:04:00] there's, what, how did you view pain? Was it something you were really feeling like you were up against, like an adversary, or what was your relationship to pain at that time?

Joletta Belton: I've written about this before too, where I call like. Conceptually, I thought of it as the enemy. This thing that I had to fight, this thing that I had to eradicate. And so everything was like a battle, fighting pain. This mentality of going to war with my pain.

There's a lot of military metaphors and the health world in general, but in pain specifically. So it was very much a battle against this enemy pain that. Resided in my hip and caused my body to turn against me kind of thing. That was my mentality for a long time. And I had been an athlete and I was a firefighter, so I was a very competitive person.

So I took that to I can fight this, I can get through this by battling this pain and eradicating this enemy, but that didn't happen.

Mark Kargela: I'm wondering how that shifted for you. I know your story from having the privilege of getting to know, you hear your story multiple times in [00:05:00] different contexts, but I'm wondering how that shifted and maybe what created that shift for you? 'cause it's a difficult, a lot of people are stuck right in that fight and in that battle and that can really grip people for some time.

I'm wondering what opened your mind to maybe a different approach.

Joletta Belton: I was in that place for years where I was battling pain and I'd gone through all of the treatments at that point, three years into this process, I had physical therapy, medications, injections. I ultimately had surgery, more physical therapy.

I did massage, I did chiropractic care, I did yoga, I did posture therapy. I like, I did all of the things and none of the things. Worked. But I absolutely loved my surgeon that reconstructed my hip, and I did have some relief and return of function after that. But I still had these ongoing pain issues that we didn't know quite how to resolve.

But I always felt believed by my surgeon. I never once felt like he blamed me for my pain or blamed me for not getting [00:06:00] better when I should have after surgery. I never felt like it was my fault when I was in his care that my pain persisted. And it was actually under like his guidance, his advice was to get out of the workers' compensation system.

'cause he said within it that I wasn't going to get better and that I was smart enough to figure it out on my own. And that's a really shitty thing for a health professional to have to say to a patient that this system that I'm treating you within is not going to help you get better. But that's where we were.

I ultimately took his advice and tried to get outta the workers' compensation system. It took me another year to get out. Once I made that, that decision, it was an such an impossible system. It's such an adversarial system such a difficult system to be within. But once I decided that I was gonna be out of the workers' compensation system and find a different way forward.

I went back to graduate school, which is not a treatment path that I recommend, nor one that is desirable for most [00:07:00] people. But I was studying like pain science and I was in a human movement program or kinesiology program. I was also studying sport and exercise psychology. So some of the things that I was learning through studying pain science in that program through the sport and exercise psychology stuff that I was learning, I just crafted a different.

Path forward for myself.

Okay.

Mark Kargela: I'm wondering when you're carving that path, it goes against a lot of maybe traditional ways we look at how we're gonna manage pain. Like a lot of it is that fight, like you said in the, and as you were learning this new ways of approaching it and all, a lot of it's self-study on your part, some guided stuff.

As you were doing, I know you steered your projects and your studies within your programs to help yourself with understanding pain better. But I'm wondering, did you find yourself ever getting pulled back or having some kind of, what doubts kinda sh and fears maybe did you have to. Overcome to take this different approach.

Joletta Belton: So many, especially because there was a whole lot of cognitive dissonance when I was in that program. So I was studying pain science, I was learning different things about and specifically like chronic pain. Why does [00:08:00] pain become chronic and is there anything that we can do about it? And then I was also in this.

Kinesiology or human movement program where I was learning a lot of stuff about biomechanics and, levers and like all of these things that I believed that supported all of my biases going into that program. 'cause I was a firefighter, I was a peer fitness trainer. I had all of these beliefs about, there being one way to move and focusing on form.

And I had this. This idea going into this program that if I could just move better, my posture could just improve that bit more. If I, if I could just tweak my movement to the right degree, then it would relieve my pain. So I went in with all of these kind of biomechanical, biomedical biases that were supported by a lot of the classes that I had to take as part of that program.

But when I had this arm of sport and exercise psychology. They, those classes thought about pain and like athletes getting injured was the context that most of that was shared within. Their approaches were a lot different. And then when I was learning about [00:09:00] the pain science, the approaches to that was a lot different.

So there was a lot of cognitive dissonance going on, and I'm in one class going according to my. My other class, this is bullshit. So I don't understand how this is all happening in the same program. So there was a lot of cognitive dissonance going on and a lot of fear around like taking this leap of trying so much of what I was learning was rather led me to this belief that if I.

Got back to living. That might help with my pain rather than being in like this holding pattern that I had been in for a really long time, trying to fix the pain before I got back to living. So what I was, reading in the pain science, what I was reading in sport and exercise psychology, were these.

Ways of trying to get back into the things that made me feel like me. Things that mattered to me, and engaging with my values, even if I had to do it in ways that looked different than before, and see where that led. But that was a huge, terrifying leap. What if I take this leap and the pain doesn't get better, and then I would have this, [00:10:00] another battle with myself, this cognitive battle.

What if I don't take that leap and things still don't get better? Do I try something new to see if that works and like worst case scenario, I'm doing more things and pain is still with me, which is what happened. I started engaging with more stuff very slowly and really tried to figure out like what my.

My values were, that drove me to be a firefighter. That drove me to be a gym rat. That led me to running like, like why did I do those things? And then was there another thing that I could do that would help me engage with that value or that meaning, or that purpose that I took from those things? Things looked a little bit differently as I was getting back into living life, but my life just very gradually started getting bigger around the pain.

But the pain didn't change for a long time. The pain stayed what it was, but life got a lot bigger around that pain and that made all the difference in the world for me. Just by that. Small, dark world I'd been living in finally [00:11:00] expanded. It grew bit by bit over time and then eventually the pain did start to change.

The more I engaged with those things that mattered to me, those things that made me feel like me and I ultimately. It, this was a years long process. This wasn't an overnight thing, but got back. I can be a gym rat again if I wanted to be. I run again, I snowboard. I took up downhill mountain biking this year.

So I'm doing a lot of things again where there were so many years where I didn't do anything. And then there was those years of step-by-step getting back into things a little bit at a time and life getting bigger. And now I'm feeling like this is the first year at 49. I'm feeling more like I did before I got hurt when I was 34 than I have in the, that interim.

So it, it all took time and not that it's gonna take 15 years for people but that approach of how can I live my life and do things that matter to me and are meaningful to [00:12:00] me with this pain rather than. Fighting the pain and battling the pain to, to eradicate it before I got on with living was a huge shift for me, and that I think ultimately changed everything.

Mark Kargela: You're touching upon it, but the word acceptance, and I know there's debate on that word, and maybe willingness being a better word, and I'm wondering if you can unpack that a little bit. 'cause I know a lot of people here. You need to just accept the pain, which it isn't really what true acceptance is.

I know you've spoke to this and written about this in the past, but I'm wondering if you can share your perspective on acceptance and what that means for somebody who's trying to make that kind of journey.

Joletta Belton: I struggle with that term acceptance and I love Cass McGregor's work around acceptance and the. What are we asking people to accept is always my question back. What are we asking them to accept? Because there's a lot of things that we don't have to accept and that we can work towards changing when we're living with pain.

But for me, like acceptance. Meant accepting my current reality, because I think for so long I was fighting that reality. I wanted to go back to what I [00:13:00] was before I got hurt. I wanted to be a firefighter again. I wanted to be a heavy lifter again. I wanted to be a runner again. I just wanted that life, that pre-pain life back, that pre-pain me back.

But that wasn't my reality. So fighting that reality was so difficult and I think led to a lot of strife and a lot of, just depression and in isolation and all of those sorts of things when I could accept my current reality. That included pain that led to a change. And for me, I long joked that it was like learning more about the science of pain.

19th century literature and Buddhist philosophy that helped me to get better. And the 19th century literature part was like, people have been suffering for a really long time, and I could see myself in the pages of these novels written, hundreds of years ago. And I'm like, oh man. Like pain and suffering is a part of the human experience and it's a part of my experience.

And that's [00:14:00] where I am right now. And I can accept that as part of my reality, and I can also work towards changing that reality. But this is where. Where I am and I have to accept that. And there is no going back. Like I, I can't go back to that person. I was before pain. I'm always going to be changed by pain.

And that's okay. God, I think I'm an alright person. And I like the changes that have taken place over time. I didn't like who I was during those dark years when I was in the depths of my pain. I didn't like who I was at that time. Because of all those battles, because of that isolation and the loneliness, because of not being able to do the things that made me feel like me.

Like I, I became really disconnected, not just from like the activities that I love doing, but the people that I love doing and the, my friends, my family, I shut everybody out. So I didn't like those aspects of myself when I was in the depths of my pain, which I didn't realize until, years later upon reflecting back.

But. Pain changes. You being in pain for a long time changes [00:15:00] you. And accepting that I think is important too. We should all be changing over time whether or not we have chronic pain. And the. Having had those experiences can lead towards positive changes too. And it not just be all negative. And help, like we were talking before we started the interview about how I was diagnosed with breast cancer last year and that was a big, life upending thing again.

But so much of what I learned through going through. Those years of chronic pain and trying to figure out how to live with pain and move forward and get through things helped me so much through that diagnosis and those treatments too.

Mark Kargela: You spoke to this a bit, but I'm wondering if you can touch a bit more on how relationships were impacted and maybe the work you had to put into relationships to, to help yourself recover and where they played a role, and again, maybe the journey that they had that occurred within your relationships as part of this.

Joletta Belton: I was a firefighter. We answered 9 1 1 calls for a living. We helped people when they [00:16:00] were having their worst day. I was really good at helping other people really good at helping people when they were asking for help, I was not very good at asking for help myself or for sharing what I was going through, and that was universal across the board.

I didn't share anything with friends. I didn't share anything with family, didn't share anything with my husband, John. I just kept it all locked in. I didn't wanna be a burden on anyone. And I also like part of. Who I was this tough person that, lifted heavy, was a firefighter, was a badass, all that kinda stuff.

So it felt very un bad assy to, to have this chronic pain and talk about it. And so that, that led to me losing a lot of friendships. It's a bi-directional street or multi-directional street too. It wasn't all just me, but I did, I lost a lot of friendships and I shut out a lot of family for a long time and for a long time, John and I just didn't communicate at all.

We just weren't, we weren't good at communicating and until one day we, we had it out where I got so mad at him [00:17:00] for not. Addressing my pain the way that I want, needed it to be addressed, even though I never talked about it. Never said how. Much pain I was in or how much I was suffering or what I needed him to do.

And I told him to just leave this isn't what you signed up for. This. I am not the person that you were when we first met, and this was 10 years into our relationship, the person you've been with the last 10 years. So just leave. And he's what the hell are you talking about? Because I thought he was over it.

My perception, the story I was telling myself to quote Brene Brown was that he was over it. That this wasn't what he signed up for and that he wanted to leave. And for him, his silence came from not knowing how to fix it. He saw how much pain I was in and how much I was suffering. I always get upset about the other people's stuff.

But he didn't know how to fix it. He didn't know what to do about it. So that led, to his own being. Locked in and not communicating. So that us having it out during this conversation led to us being able to communicate about it [00:18:00] better, and developing our own way of talking about, hard things.

And having a shorthand, like for me it was my bucket was overflowing. So if I told 'em like, my bucket is full, or my bucket is overflowing, it meant I can't make a decision. For the rest of the day, no matter how small you think that decision is, do not ask me what we're having for dinner. Do not ask me what's happening.

Like I cannot make another decision because my bucket is overflowing. Pain is too high. Stress or anxiety, all of these things are too high and too much, and I'm just trying to get through the next moment. I can't. I can't go beyond that and make decisions. And that was lifesaving too. If my bucket was overflowing, then he could take care of dinner or whatever needed to be taken care of.

Without us having to have a conversation about it. I could say my bucket's overflowing. He would make dinner or make a decision about dinner, whatever. So that, that communication helped a lot. And then when I was, so those three really dark years, I was three for early years of my pain. That was before I went back to graduate school or anything like [00:19:00] that.

Once I, when I went to school and then I, have to, you have to participate in the discussion boards and interact with people. And since I was studying pain, I would talk about it a little bit there and then, that led to me thinking like, I can share this in a blog. So I started my blog and of how I was trying to make sense of my pain with what I was learning in school.

And that led to all of these connections with other people that lived with pain. And I would I thought that my experience was so specific to me that no one else could possibly understand it or have gone through it. And I got so many messages and emails. From people saying, you just told my story. Like you, your experience is my experience.

I had so many firefighters and police officers and people who weren't in aren't first responders at all reach out to me and say I was telling their story, and so having those peers. People with the same lived experiences or very similar lived experiences to me. And being able to talk with them and learn from them and hear [00:20:00] their story and see myself reflected in their stories and them seeing themselves reflected in mine like that was huge.

And I still to this day have so many friends that I met from those earlier years of writing and advocacy work and all of that, like my pain pals around the world. Like Bronny and Keith Meldrum and Pete Moore and just so many people around the world that I'm still in contact with now because I met them through pain and they became dear friends.

And that support in those relationships that, that peer to peer, learning and just being with each other, even if it's online was so valuable for me. John and I are still together 25 years this year,

Mark Kargela: love it. Congrats to you two for sure. I'd love if you can go back and maybe go through your journey of the inner critic that lies within us. All right. And I know of working with a lot of people in difficult pain situations the things they tell themselves or the way they talk to themselves.

And you've mentioned it where you're great at [00:21:00] talking nicely and kindly and supportively and empathetically to the people you were serving when you're answering 9 1 1 calls. And you, you alluded to this a bit already, but I'm wondering if you could speak to that. That difficult inner monologue we have with each other.

And does it always go completely away or do you feel like maybe that part of us maybe is there a bit, but you've learned to manage it a bit better? I'm just curious where you fall on that.

Joletta Belton: I don't think that inner critic kind of ever goes away or that inner, like that judgment of yourself, if it does, that would be fantastic. And if anyone has any hints as to how to do that. I am all ears, but I think I was harshest on myself during those early years. 'cause I grew up in a blue collar family in Detroit where you didn't talk about pain, you didn't talk about that kind of stuff.

Then I became a firefighter where you also don't talk about pain, you don't talk about that kind of stuff. And so I carried all of that with me. Like these beliefs that I had around pain and. These notions of like pain being weakness or that I should be able to just get [00:22:00] myself out of it, that I should be able to get better, especially after all these fricking treatments that I went through, like I felt like I was the faulty thing.

The, I was the one part of the equation that was wrong, that was broken that couldn't, figure this out when everybody else could that, and that was part of learning from other peers too. When you feel so alone that you're not going through this, you can also feel like you're the only one that can't get better.

And then, there were, even when I was in at that better place and trying to. Live life more with pain, then you'd, I'd flare up and I'd blame myself for that. But it, I like, it would be so random. Like I would do a whole bunch of stuff not flare up, not do anything flare up and then I would go insane trying to figure out what it was that caused this flare up.

What did I do? It was always, what did I do that brought this on rather than just, humans. In pain, everything is weird. And, stuff happens and I'm not at fault for [00:23:00] everything that goes wrong, especially when I'm not taking credit for all the times that things went right too. So I think that inner critic even now, I still deal with that like in a whole.

Variety of just daily living things, even if you don't have pain. All of us, I think, have that inner critic and being able to tell myself now that I don't have to listen to it can be really helpful having, peers or a spouse that can remind you that you don't have to listen to it.

Those sorts of things are really helpful too. But I think that because of those cultures I was a part of growing up and being a firefighter. You can still take a lot of that. That self blame on. And then I think being on the workers' compensation system or the healthcare system too, a lot of times when you do have unexplained pain that doesn't respond to treatment, even if you're not being explicitly blamed, it can feel like you're being blamed for your pain not getting better.

So that's a lot. It's a lot to take on. So to, to be able to work through that, to know [00:24:00] I am not to blame for my pain. I'm not to blame for my pain not getting better when I thought that it should have or when I expected it to. I'm not to blame for my pain being here right now. And I can also take steps forward that will hopefully start to change things moving forward.

What can I do tomorrow to. To help with things to keep things in a more positive trajectory. 'cause it's really easy for me to spiral.

Mark Kargela: This goes into like self-compassion. It's a common thing. I just spoke to Shelly Prosko and she's one of the amazing people who really. Teaches a lot on this. I'm wondering, and you've alluded to it and spoke to it already a bit, but I'm wondering where you feel like self-compassion fits for somebody making this journey and trying to find a way forward when they're dealing with some difficult thoughts and some maybe difficult self-talk that they're dealing with to themselves.

Joletta Belton: I think that it's huge and like I said, like it, it was so much easier for me to do that for other people than to ever do it for myself. And so [00:25:00] being able to remind myself if what I am saying to myself about myself right now was something that a friend that I love was saying about themselves.

What would I say to that person? I would never like pile onto them like I do to myself. I would be compassionate, I would be supportive. I would be there for them. And so trying to think okay, so if this was a friend saying these things, how would I respond to it? And then can I direct that to myself?

And I think that. We can become so isolated in that dark place in that Drew letter calls it the malignant mist of pain. That it's hard to have compassion for other people in those circumstances too, especially if we don't have compassion for ourselves. So when I made that shift of being more forgiving of myself for being where I was, being more compassionate towards myself for, going through some really hard times and making it through those times and being more compassionate with myself allowed me to start being [00:26:00] more compassionate towards other people's too.

I think that. It goes both ways. The more you can do it for other people, perhaps, the more that you can do it for yourself, the more you can do it for yourself, the more compassionate you can be towards other people too. And because I think we totally, understandably when you have chronic pain or when you have pain that doesn't get better.

When you think that it should, you become very focused internally on that pain. It's hard to look out and focus on other people, but being dogs are a great way to be able to do that. Could always be compassionate with dogs, even if not people. But I think that self-compassion and recognizing like you are not just a broken, messed up, faulty individual, you're just a human having a challenging experience.

And this is a thing that humans do. We go through challenging experiences. 'cause I could be pretty judgmental when I was a paramedic of people like who used the 9 1 1 system to handle chronic conditions without ever having been in it. [00:27:00] Myself. And then seeing, being in the system, especially the workers' compensation system and seeing all of the ways our health systems fail, people with ongoing pain became much more compassionate towards, the people that it might not or that it might have judged too harshly as a PA paramedic not might have that I did judge too harshly as a paramedic.

Mark Kargela: I am wondering some of the common misconceptions people have is that there's gonna be this thought, and maybe as they're delving into this bio-psychosocial approach, some of the perception is that this is all in my head, so I'm wondering if you could speak to that. 'cause the science speaks. Not to that, but there are components maybe.

But I'm wondering if you could speak to that for somebody who's I don't I'm feeling like this is getting pointed towards my head and that the problem's in my head. I'm wondering how you would respond to that or maybe help somebody navigate that challenging kind of tussle that they'll have with it.

Joletta Belton: It's one of the great struggles of our time and that we're still dualists and we still think of the mind and body as two separate things. My [00:28:00] pain was always, and has always been in my hip. It is not in my head. The pain I feel is always very distinctly in my hip. And so while.

My hip is is where that pain is. It's not where my human experience lies though. My human experience isn't entirely within my hip. It's part of a much bigger whole, and I think that focusing on that whole is really important, but my hip is always gonna be a part of that. My, my immune system, my nervous system, all of those, the.

The internal systems within us are always gonna be a part of our pain experience in addition to, our thoughts and our behaviors and all those sorts of things, but we can never take the biology out and that's not the intention of bio psychosocial approaches. That's sometimes one of the criticisms of it that we're forgetting the bio, but I don't think people really are forgetting the bio.

They're just trying to encourage people to not just focus on the tissues and the hip, because the things that helped me were never [00:29:00] hip specific stuff. It was getting out into nature. It was reading 19th century literature. It was becoming, more familiar with Buddhist philosophy, which is where a lot of like the acceptance stuff and the willingness stuff comes from or parallels if not comes from, but those ideas of being able to like.

Sit with rather than fight if I was still just focused on my hip and what my hip was doing, like biomechanics and strengthening my hip. 'cause that was, some of the things that I heard when I was at the strongest I've ever been in my life. Being told things like you, your hip is weak.

There's no frigging way. I just can't be like, did you see what I did for a living? If I had just focused on that, I probably would still be stuck if I didn't take an approach that encompassed all of who I am as a human and the experiences I was having, both with pain and the alongside pain, trying to navigate how to get through it or live with it.

That was a always a whole person thing that needed to be. Addressed and like being in stressful systems is going to [00:30:00] impact you. That people can relate, I think, to stress biology and if there's someone walks in a room that they work with or in their family or an in-law that they really don't get along with, you have a visceral physiological reaction to that.

And so people know that this happens within their body. I think that. Being able to recognize, okay, this happens when I'm super stressed. This is what I feel in my body like. So it makes sense that when I'm in a lot of pain, which is a very distressing thing, that there's gonna be more going on in my body than what's happening just in my hip.

That's a whole systemic, like head to toe kind of thing.

Mark Kargela: I wanna finish with one thing. If you could go and look back and speak to you when you're in your darkest times or when you are, maybe you could speak to somebody who's in a difficult, they're stuck right now. What would you want them to hear?

Joletta Belton: I would want them to hear, or my former self to hear like that, that your pain is real and I believe you. Keith Meldrum talks about this. If people aren't familiar with him, [00:31:00] Google him. He's an amazing advocate too. But he tells a story about being believed. And I think that is so powerful because we can feel like we're not believed or like we're to blame for our pain, whether we're imposing that on ourselves or we're getting that externally from other people.

So I would want that person or my former self to know that their pain is very real and that it is believed in that. I would also want them to know that even if they've been in pain for a really long time and they've tried everything, that there are still ways for life to change, even if pain can't change and that maybe by changing life a little bit, the pain will change over time.

And that's much, it's much harder. Thing to take on board than something that's going to fix you. And it is completely understandable to just want to be fixed. If there is a cure for chronic pain tomorrow, I would take it. But then we have to figure out and until that time, or if that time never comes, how do we live?

[00:32:00] Well now. With the pain that we have, with the reality that we're in, what steps can we take? What support can we find? All of those sorts of things. And then it would help that person, my former self, find some of those supports and people that might help 'em along the way.

Mark Kargela: Yeah, a lot of good supports out there. You mentioned a few in the podcast and there's a growing number of advocates like yourself who are doing some great work to get the support out there for people. I know I speak for our audience and a lot of people around the world who want to thank you for all the work you're doing to get the voice out there for the lived experience.

It's one that. Is, still underrepresented, but has made a, you've made a good impact and I know it continues to make impact to where the lived experience is more front and center when we're having conferences and we're doing research studies and different things like that. Thank you so much.

Joletta Belton: Thank you.

Mark Kargela: We'll leave it there this week for all you watching. We'd love if you could share this episode. Maybe you know, somebody who's struggling with pain and needs to hear maybe some other ways of approaching it that have helped others. If you could share that episode. If you're not subscribed, subscribe to the podcast.

We'll leave it there this week. [00:33:00] We'll talk to you all next week.